Welcome back to our French word of the week blog – are you ready to learn all of the most important points about the verb entrer?
To hear its pronunciation, you can take a listen to the audio clip below:
We don’t always recommend this, but you might be trying to work out the translation by thinking about similar English words. The words ‘enter’ or ‘entry’ might have already come to mind… Luckily, they are indeed related to the meaning of the French word entrer! It can mean to enter, to go in, to come in and to input, among other translations.
Moving onto the grammar, entrer follows a regular conjugation pattern for -er type verbs. For a refresher, visit our Easy Learning French Grammar pages about regular -er verbs in the present indicative, present subjunctive and imperfect tense.
However, there is one important point to note – entrer is part of a small group of French verbs which take être in compound tenses when used intransitively, but avoir when used transitively. This might sound a bit confusing at the moment, but you’ll be able to see this more clearly in our upcoming examples!
We’ll start with the intransitive use, which means there is no direct object needed for the action of ‘entering’. In other words, the subject is ‘doing the entering’. Remember it forms compound tenses using être, which we’ll highlight examples of in the list below.
entrer dans to go into; to join (a club; a society)
entrer dans l’histoire to go down in history
entrer dans l’armée to join the army
entrer à l’hôpital to go into hospital
entrer à l’université to be admitted to university
faire entrer to get in
Ça fait dix ans qu’elle est entrée dans sa carrière. She started her career ten years ago.
Je viens d’entrer dans le salon. I only just came into the lounge.
Entrez, s’il vous plaît ! Come in, please!
Nous entrions quand nous avons entendu la sonnerie. We were going in when we heard the alarm.
défense d’entrer no entry (you might see this phrase in all capital letters, such as on a sign)
Now for a few examples of the transitive use, meaning the subject takes a direct object for the action of ‘entering’:
entrer des données to input data
On a entré la table par la porte principale. We got the table in through the main door.
Est-ce que tu avais déjà entré ton numéro de téléphone ? Had you already put your phone number in?
Well done on adding another French word to your growing list of vocabulary. We hope that all of the words you’ve learned so far have entered in, and are staying in, your mind! See you here next week.
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
